United States says more VW cas have emissions-cheating devices

As it gets set to present US regulators with plan to fix its diesel vehicles, Volkswagen announced plans to cut its capital spending by €1 billion ($1.4 billion Cdn) next year. Addition of the 3-litre engine takes the total of affected vehicles to 85,000 vehicles in the U.S. alone.

Audi of America is following its parent company’s lead and is offering a “goodwill package” to owners of the Audi A3 equipped with the 2.0-liter TDI engine.

Following the latest revelation, it remains unclear precisely how many Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche vehicles were equipped with emissions-control software in the United States and the rest of the world.

Regulators said company officials acknowledged Thursday in a meeting that emissions violations the EPA had previously alleged, most from the last couple of model years, go much further.

While Volkswagen has admitted that the illegal devices were on its smaller cars, it has not conceded that they are on the larger engines, despite the EPA’s allegations.

Stertz said the software is legal in Europe and it’s not the same as a device that enabled four-cylinder VW diesel engines to deliberately cheat on emissions tests.

The meeting between company engineers and technical experts at EPA and CARB was a technical discussion “to talk through the violations so that both sides understand the data and the systems and the software”, Ward said.

For authorities to bring charges against Bosch, they would have to prove the supplier knew that their technology was being used by Volkswagen to evade emissions requirements, said Daniel Riesel, an environmental attorney at Sive, Paget & Riesel P.C. The EPA had already accused the automaker of installing the defeat-device software on about 10,000 3-liter SUVs and luxury cars from 2014 to 2016. Additional VW and Porsche models weren’t available Friday afternoon, but initially the EPA said it also was on the 2014 VW Touareg and 2015 Porsche Cayenne.

These accusations also involve Proche for the first time, which puts new chief executive of VW, Matthias Müller in a hard position as he was former chief executive of Porsche. “That should have been reported”, he said, adding that the agencies are now investigating whether that constituted intentional cheating on VW’s part.